Letters to the Editor

Regarding Rolf Carriere and Michael Nagler's March 27 Opinion piece, "Fight violence with nonviolence": The authors mention that there is a "prevailing prejudice that only governments or armed forces have the responsibility or means to contain conflict." They might have also mentioned that most governments encourage propaganda that glorifies war.

It seems clear that most people on earth are acculturated to the idea that war is right and necessary. Yet there is ample evidence in anthropological literature that the human species can choose between living peacefully (and having creative ways to deal with conflict) or living with war and all its waste of money, resources, and lives.

In response to Rolf Carriere and Michael Nagler's recent Opinion piece on unarmed peacekeepers: Unarmed peacekeepers may work in areas where the majority of the population wants peace, however, I question their effectiveness when only one side is launching attacks and those attacks are against unarmed civilians. If terrorists do not hesitate to kill their friends and neighbors, why would they not kill unarmed foreigners?

Remember the Taliban terrorists who destroyed two ancient and priceless Buddha statutes in Afghanistan because their existence was contrary to the terrorists' beliefs.

Liberalism lives on

In response to Walter Rodgers's March 18 Opinion piece, "Liberalism is gone – don't let tolerance pass with it": Mr. Rodgers sugarcoats his view that liberalism is dead by reminding readers that crucial economic and social safeguards created in the mid-20th century are an inheritance from this dead "relative," and by pleading for "tolerance" as the live essence of the otherwise dead body of liberalism.